


His Beauty

by mathildia



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: 1900s, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Anachronistic, BDSM, F/M, Light Femdom, Nymphomania, Older Woman/Younger Man, male submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1851130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathildia/pseuds/mathildia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you have anything of value?” Miss Jessop said heavily, “Anything you could offer me in lieu of some of the rent? I’m willing to consider any reasonable deal, then perhaps I can work with you on how the farm is managed. But I will need something upfront. Today.”</p><p>Bill’s father looked up at the ceiling. “There’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve got nothing left."</p><p>Bill looked at Miss Jessop. Her eyes kept flickering onto him. Just quick glances, but he knew what they meant. </p><p>He waited for her to look at him again, then said, “There is something.” He swallowed. “There’s me.”</p><p>COMPLETE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Farmer's Boy and the Land Owner

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't find the gender swapped Beauty and the Beast story I wanted to read - so I wrote it.

He was called Bill, and he had once been a boy. Just an ordinary boy. A boy, much like any other boy. A farmer’s boy. He liked to read and play about on the farm. He helped out when he could, but only a little was expected of him – he was a boy.

There came a summer when the boy grew. He had been growing all is life, of course, but this summer he grew more than he could remember growing before. By the end of that summer he was more than four inches taller than he had been at its start, and taller than his father. His shoulders had grown broad and full of muscle. He grew hair on his arms and chest and face and cock. After that summer he was expected to help out on the farm much more. He looked like a man. But he wasn’t a man. He was a boy, still. 

Bill's life had few cares. For example, Bill had never thought of his father’s farm as anything other than the place where he lived. It had never occurred to him that his father may not own the farm or that their right to live on the farm would ever be in doubt. But all that changed on a day in summer, a full four summers after the one where Bill had grown so tall, when he came into the farmhouse kitchen and found his father slumped over a pile of papers at the table.

Bill was grateful and proud that his mother had taught him to read. The day she said goodbye to him, she had told him that all her books would now belong to him. He’d read them all many times since then. All eight of them. 

But as he looked over his father’s shoulder at the papers on the table, he would have preferred not to be able to see, so clearly, exactly what they said. 

_Repossession_. 

The rental payments on the farm had not been made. The land owners, a company called Jessops, explained in terse paragraphs that in six weeks time they would be expecting the farm to be vacated and handed back to them.

“We won’t go,” Bill’s father told him. “Get all the farm hands in here. We’ll use the shotguns. They won’t evict us, not without a fight.”

But the farmhands refused. They’d been offered better contracts by Jessops to continue working on the farm after it had been taken back into their possession. Bill’s father raged that he didn’t need them, that he would see off the land owners by himself, and he began drinking most of a bottle of whisky every night.

Bill knew when his father was desperate.

*

The day of the eviction came and Bill’s father, unshaven and grim-faced, loaded his shotgun at the kitchen table and wouldn't meet Bill's eye. Bill had not slept a wink the night before. His eyes felt gritty and his heart thundered in his chest. The little farm was all he and his father had. They were not exactly close, but it had just been the two of them for so long. 

He jumped at the knock at the door. 

“Fuck off,” slurred Bill’s father, still fiddling with his shotgun. Bill realised his father was still drunk from the night before.

“Mr Brown, would you open this door please. I have the necessary paper work to evict you.”

It was a woman’s voice. Bill had not expected that. And, apparently, neither had his father, who took up his shotgun and lumbered over to the door. He pulled it open and shoved his gun into the face of the woman on the doorstep. “My apologies for my language, I did not realise you was a woman. Fuck off, bitch.”

The woman did not flinch at the gun, the language or Bill’s father’s breath, which Bill knew would be eye-wateringly fetid after night upon night of drinking. “Mr Brown,” she said, “we have tried to open a dialogue with you about this matter many times.” Her voice was pleasant, well-spoken. Bill couldn’t see much of her, past his father’s bulk. He could make out some brown hair and a green woollen hat. 

“Get off my land,” Bill’s father snarled. “Or I will shoot you.”

“Mr Brown, it is not your land. Please lower your gun before you do something foolish.”

“I said, ‘fuck off, bitch’. Am I going to have to make you fuck off?”

There was a _snick_ from the gun and then a pause, and then the woman said, “I rather think you are, Mr Brown.”

 _Christ, this woman was either very brave or very stupid_. Bill knew that tone and knew his father wasn’t bluffing, not drunk as he was. 

And so when he saw his father’s finger twitch on the trigger, Bill couldn't think of any option except to hurl himself across the room and hope. He caught his father sideways on, grabbing him around the waist and forcing him to the floor. The gun went off, the bullet flying up into the beams of the kitchen.

It was a sort of betrayal, he supposed.

Bill sat up, straddling his father. He gently took the gun out of his hands and set it down on the stone floor. His father looked up at him, blearily, confused about what had just happened.

The woman was also staring at him. Her mouth was open. She had heavy framed brown glasses on her plain, scrubbed face and was short and dumpy, most of her covered in a long green coat. “Good grief,” she said. “Good grief, I never thought he’d actually… Not for a second…Is he mentally unstable?”

“Nah, he’s pissed is all, Miss, sorry,” said Bill. “I dunno if he meant it, really.”

“He could have killed me.”

“He rightly could. That thing, at that range, your brains would have covered the yard out there.” Bill laughed. He'd cleaned many things off that yard, but never a lady's brains. He had no idea why that thought amused him. He straightened his face.

The woman looked over her shoulder at the yard and sighed in bewilderment. When she turned back to Bill, she still looked baffled. “I’m Miss Jessop. You must be Mr Brown’s son. Bill, isn’t it?” She held out a hand for him to shake. Bill couldn’t help noticing the way she was looking at him. She was really, really looking at him. Like, her eyes kept sliding away from his face, down is body, stopping on his chest, then going lower. And though she almost caught it in time, as her gaze slipped to his breeches, she bit her bottom lip.

“Yeah, that’s right. Bill,” said Bill brightly. Her attention snapped back to is face as he took her hand and shook it. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t stand up.” He nodded down at his father, who was seething up at him.

“What the fucking fuck did you do that for?” Bill’s father said, his voice slurring and sliding around.

Bill wasn’t sure what his father was referring to exactly, but assumed he was talking about the way he had stopped him shooting Miss Jessop. “I had to, dad. You’re fucking out of it.” He looked back up at Miss Jessop. “Excuse my language, Miss.”

“That's just fine under the circumstances, Bill. Now, uh, Mr Brown,” said Miss Jessop, who had stopped her obviously eyeing of Bill’s body. “I will have to inform the police of this incident.”

“Do what you fucking want, bitch,” Bill’s father said. 

“What?” said Bill, “Dad! No! Please don’t do that Miss Jessop. He’s drunk, is all. I’ll sort him out.”

“Bill, he shot at me. And besides, you do know you’re being evicted? He has told you. Even if I don’t report the shooting, sorting this out will involve more than you putting your father to bed and waiting for him to sleep off the liquor. There’s no bed to put him in, for a start.”

“Please don't do this to us, Miss. Any of it. I'll find the rent. I'll figure something out.” Miss Jessop looked at him and nodded gently. "Bill, your father probably hasn't told you, but I have tried to resolve..."

“No, please,” came a soft whimper from between Bill’s thighs. He looked down at his father, whose expression had completely changed. He looked like a entirely different man. “Please, listen to my lad. Please don’t take my farm, Lady. It's all I have. Please don't ruin me in front of my son.” There were tears in Bill’s father’s eyes.

Miss Jessop squatted down, next to Bill’s father’s face. “Mr Brown, it’s been almost a year since you paid rent. I understand the current economic climate. No one wants this to happen. But have tried to make arrangements with you so many times.”

“Could you try one more time?” said Bill’s father, quietly.

“I suppose. Do you have anything of value?” Miss Jessop said heavily, “Anything you could offer me in lieu of some of the rent? I’m willing to consider any reasonable deal, then perhaps I can work with you on how the farm is managed. But I will need something upfront. Today.”

Bill’s father rolled his head away from her and looked up at the ceiling. “There’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve got nothing left.”

Bill looked at Miss Jessop. Her eyes kept flickering onto him. Just quick glances, but he knew what they meant. 

He waited for her to look at him again, then said, “There is something.” He swallowed. “There’s me."

“What?” said Miss Jessop, with a sudden burst of nervous laughter. “You? What value do you have exactly, Bill?”

“Plenty.” He got cautiously to his feet, his father made no attempt to move. “You must need staff, servants, in your place. A rich lady like you. I’m a good worker. I’m strong. I’m a quick learner. I can read.” He watched her reactions, trying to stand in a way that made his body look as strong and appealing as possible. 

“Really. Um…” Miss Jessop brought a hand to her throat, her fingers fluttering nervously. Bill saw her throat move as she swallowed twice. “Do you have any special training, skills?”

“You can train me,” he said. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

He saw her tiny smile then, just for a second, but he had been looking for it. “You can’t…, you can’t mean this, Bill.” And then she started to blush.

“I do mean it.” He looked down at his father, then up at her through his scruffy fringe. “I have no choice, Miss Jessop, I can’t let you take the farm. It’s all my father has.”

“I suppose I could work something out with your wages. I’d have to go over the figures. How old are you, Bill?”

“I’m 19, Miss.”

“Mr Brown,” said Miss Jessop, leaning over to Bill’s father on the floor. “What do you say to this proposal?”

Bill's father, looked thoughtfully up at Miss Jessop. “You want to take my son and leave me the farm? I don’t rightly know about that.”

“I understand it’s unorthodox.”

“Dad, it’s the only way,” said Bill. “We have to do this.”

“Bill’s right,” said Mr Brown, heaving himself up on his elbows, and looking rather grey as he did it. “I can’t see what choice we have. I’m going to have to sell my son to you.”

Miss Jessop looked at Bill. Bill tried not to smirk at her. “Possibly, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” she said.


	2. The Lord and his Lady

Outside the farmhouse, Bill was thrilled to see Miss Jessop’s Oldsmobile. “You have a car?”

“I do. Maybe I’ll teach you to drive it. Get in.” 

Bill climbed up next to Miss Jessop as she wrangled the knobs and levers that made it go until it stuttered to life. “You’d really teach me?”

“Sure. Maybe you could be my chauffeur.”

“That would be quite something. Although I must say, I assumed you had a different position in mind for me,” Bill said, as Miss Jessop steered the car onto the lane.

“You did? What?”

“I thought you wanted me for your bed, Miss.”

“What?” Miss Jessop, glanced quickly at him, her expression shocked. She was blushing again.

“Oh, there’s no shame in it. Ladies like you, do that. I do know. Don’t think I understand nothing about the world, Miss. I saw the way you looked at me. I grew up on a farm. I don’t mind at all. It’s flattering, really, you wanting me that way. I haven’t ever met a woman like you before. A proper lady. It’s exciting for me that you would pay such an interest.”

"Bill, that is absolutely not the case. I agreed to your deal to help you and your father."

Bill wasn't sure whether her red face was shame or anger. "Sorry, Miss. I'm just teasing you, is all. And it's completely up to you what I do."

Miss Jessop frowned at the road ahead. “I think, Bill, perhaps you should stop talking,” she said tightly.

“Whatever you say, Miss.” 

For the rest of the journey, Bill looked out of the window at the countryside streaming past. It was thrilling. 

*

As Bill had imagined, Miss Jessop lived in a large house, detached and set away from the road, in pleasant grounds. As they drove up to the front door, he could see that behind the house, lawns ended in wild woodland. 

Miss Jessop pulled the levers to steady the car and said, “I don’t really have any servants, as such. I used to, but I began to find it intrusive. There’s a house keeper who comes every weekday and a gardener three times a week. You’d be the only live-in servant.”

“I see,” said Bill. 

Miss Jessop got down from the car and Bill hopped after her “I don’t have anything prepared for you, of course,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like a room or anything.”

“A room? Will I be needing my own room? Won’t you just keep me in your own bedroom?" he said as he followed her up the steps to the large front door. 

She pulled out a set of keys. “Bill, please drop this. You are not here to be anything like that.” 

Bill laughed. “I’m just teasing you is all, but can I ask what you imagine my duties comprising of?”

“I don’t know. You said you can read so secretarial services, accompanying me to events, perhaps. I’m very busy I am sure there will be plenty to do.” She swung the door open and he followed her inside.

*

Miss Jessop suggested they begin with a tour of the house. Bill agreed, quite thrilled. He’d never been in such a grand house before, let alone been shown around by its owner.

When they reached the first floor, Bill was surprised when she didn’t say anything about a small flight of stairs they passed. She had been so careful point out every last detail of everything else, from the paintings on the walls to the distant horizons of the views from each window. “Wait,” he called, as she walked straight past them. “Miss Jessop, what’s up there?”

Miss Jessop looked flustered. “Up there? Nothing. Just some rooms I don’t use. This house is huge. I can’t keep all of it open, by myself.”

“It is really big. Do you really not have any proper, live-in staff?”

“Not for a long time. Until today,” Miss Jessop said, smiled, and led Bill down three steps and round a corner, to yet another corridor. She showed him offices, storerooms, spare bedrooms and a music room. Downstairs he had already seen a kitchen, where the house keeper had left stew and fresh bread for dinner, a bright living room, another office, a darkened drawing room and a conservatory, where, Miss Jessop had said, she liked to eat breakfast. 

They were at the back of the house now. Miss Jessop stopped outside a single imposing door. “And this,” she said, turning the handle and letting the door swing open, “is my bedroom.”

Miss Jessop stood back, letting Bill walk in first. 

The bright, light room was incredible, like something from a dream. A large four poster bed, right in the center of the floor, was hung with delicate lace. The dark wooden floor boards were almost completely covered in rich rugs, the tall windows were hung with more lace, through which could be spied the beautiful grounds and the distant woods. 

Bill gave a little gasp as he turned to look at Miss Jessop. "I've never seen a room like this." She smiled at him, embarrassed. “No one but me has been in here for years. The housekeeper has, I suppose, but not a man. A guest.” 

"I'm not a guest, Miss." Bill looked down at his feet, then let his eyes drift up to catch hers through his fringe. 

Miss Jessop coughed, but he'd noticed how she was looking at him. “So you’ve seen all the rooms now. Did you see one you’d like to take? You’ll have to make the bed up yourself, I’m afraid.” 

Still looking at her coyly, Bill said, “Are you sure, you don’t plan to keep me in here, Miss? It’s such a pretty room. I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

Miss Jessop stiffened. “Please, Bill, this situation is dubious enough. I’m trying to help your family. That’s all. I have no intention of exploiting you or your situation. I have asked you, and I think I’ve been quite clear, to stop teasing me about our circumstances.”

“But why should I stop teasing?” said Bill, taking a couple of steps towards her. They’d been closer in the car, but this seemed more intimate somehow. He was close enough to touch her. _In her bedroom_. “What are you going to do if I don’t stop? You can’t exactly fire me when I’m your slave, can you?”

Miss Jessop’s eyes went wide. “What? You are most emphatically not _my slave_ , Bill.”

“Aren’t I? What am I then?”

Miss Jessop made a thoughtful face. “Have you ever heard of a thing called, indentured servitude, Bill?”

“Can’t say that I have, Miss,” replied Bill, suppressing the urge to ask if it had anything to do with teeth. 

“It’s something they used to do in the last century. Out at the colonies. To pay for the journey, people would offer a certain amount of unwaged labour on arrival.”

“They’d offer to be a slave to pay a debt, then? Like I did.”

Bill's breathing was getting heavier. He saw Miss Jessop watching the rise and fall of his chest.

“Not really," she said roughly. "It’s a transaction, but the servitude would be to settle a debt, yes. Often the indentured servants would try and run away, to get off without paying as it were.”

“That’s not the case with me though. If I run off you’ll go back and take my father’s farm. Possibly even have him arrested too. I can't run.”

“I suppose.” Miss Jessop looked wistful. 

“Unless, taking steps to ensure I don’t escape is something you want to do.”

“I _could_ just trust you.”

“You can do whatever you want.”

He held her gaze. He liked the way she was looking at him.

Miss Jessop gave a high pitched nervous laugh. "Let's choose a room for you, Bill," she said.

*

Bill selected the bedroom nearest to Miss Jessop’s own room. Something she made no remark upon. She left him alone to make up the bed and wash himself. And after he had arranged the sheets and counterpane on the bed as best he could, he lay down on top of it. It was softer than anything he had ever slept on at the farm. Softer even than the bed his mother had once had. 

He hadn’t really allowed himself to think much about is situation. But as he lay back on the bed and felt the soft pillows under him, he let reality sink in. He had sold himself. Whatever Miss Jessop might want to call it. He had sold himself to her and he had, he distinctly remembered, agreed to do _anything_. And although he liked Miss Jessop, he knew she was also the reason his father was going to be evicted. She didn’t just work for the company that owned the farm – she _was_ the company that owned the farm. 

_She was Jessops. She owned the farm. And now she owned him._

But the thought that most disturbed him, the one that he couldn’t make light of, or push away, was the idea that he had wanted to do this. What he had done wouldn’t even have occurred to most people. But it had come to him in a flash. 

He’d offered this. He’d done it willingly. And he’d wanted it. 

*

After washing, he planned to go downstairs and find Miss Jessop. He was hungry and remembered the supper that the housekeeper had left. He could probably work out how to prepare it. The elaborate range in Miss Jessop’s kitchen was more complex than anything on the farm, but he was good with machinery.

He ought to start making himself useful. That was, after all, the point of this exercise.

But as he passed through a familiar hallway, he saw those stairs again. The ones that led up.

Miss Jessop hadn’t shown him anything on a floor above this one. Was there a whole level of the house he hadn’t seen? That seemed odd. It had seemed, during the tour, that Miss Jessop was showing him everything. Hadn’t she said, “You’ve seen all the rooms”? Or was it “You’ve seen all the bedrooms”?

After a quick glance up and down that hallway to establish that Miss Jessop was nowhere around, Bill took a breath and put one foot on the first stair. 

_Up_. The stairs from the ground floor to the first floor were grand and sweeping. These stairs were dusty and narrow. It got darker as he ascended. He was less than halfway up before he was feeling his way. He fumbled on to the top and found a door. He tried the handle. It was locked. He pushed, but there was no give anywhere.

After a minute of futile heaving, he gave up on the locked door and trotted back down the stairs, following the light back down to the first floor hallway. After a moment spent getting his bearings he rounded a corner and bumped right into Miss Jessop. She sprung away from him, flustered.

“Ah, Bill,” she said with a distinct pinkness to her cheeks. _Was that because she had touched him?_ Bill hoped so very much. Miss Jessop coughed. “Yes, Bill. Sorry. Should watch where I’m going.”

“Oh no, Miss, it was me. Careless. Sorry.”

Miss Jessop nodded. “I was just coming to see it you wanted any dinner. You’ve not eaten all day, have you?”

Bill swallowed. He was incredibly hungry. “No, Miss. But I thought you would want me to prepare something for you.”

“Oh no, no. I’ve already done it. I’m used to taking care of myself.”

Miss Jessop smiled and stepped back. It was only then that Bill noticed she’d dressed for dinner. Her brown hair was swept up and she was wearing a long green dress. She was still plain and dumpy, but there was a glitter in her eyes. “You look wonderful, Miss,” he said.

“Thank you, Bill. Why don’t you escort me to dinner.” And she offered him her arm. He took it gently - the first time she had invited him to touch her – and together they descended the stairs. 

Like a lord and his lady.

*

Over dinner, which was simple and delicious, Miss Jessop asked Bill an endless stream of questions about himself, about life on the farm. He answered each one politely and courteously. 

“So where is your mother, Bill?’ she said eventually, as Bill was wiping his plate with a hunk of bread.

“Oh, I don’t know, Miss. In all this time. She could be very far away,” he said, gobbling the bread down, as he spoke.

“She just left?”

Dropping the bread, Bill looked down at his plate. “That’s right.”

“Don’t you miss her.”

He looked up. “Course I fucking miss her, ‘scuse my language, Miss. I was eight years old.”

Miss Jessop seemed to recoil from his anger. Bill wasn’t sorry. “I apologise for the food being so simple," she said over a sharp inhale. "Do you want anything else? I think there’s some cheese in the pantry.”

“No,” said Bill, pushing his plate away. “I’m fine, really.”

Miss Jessop smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve upset you. Let me show you something. I’ve a surprise for you.”

“Miss, you don’t need to. It’s fine.” But his heart was hurting. He hadn’t thought about his mother for years. He couldn’t hide it. 

Miss Jessop stood up. She took the candelabra from the centre of the long table. “I insist, come with me.”

Bill followed Miss Jessop out of the room. She led him through the dark corridors of the house. 

She walked fast and he had to sharpen his wits to keep up with her, sometimes just following the glimmering light. Until, at last he rounded a corner and found her stopped in front of a doorway. 

“I was saving this,” she said, her hand on the door knob. She twisted it and let the door swing open. “You said you could read. This,” she said, “this is the library.”

Bill peered through the door as Miss Jessop raised the candelabra in an opulent sweep. He had never seen so many books in his life.


	3. The Chauffeur and his Employer

In the morning, Bill ate breakfast alone in the dining room, as a note from Miss Jessop suggested he should. Afterwards he found the way to the office, as it had also suggested.

Miss Jessop was sitting a large desk, behind her a huge window offered a quite staggering view of the gardens. He could see a middle-aged man out there, pruning roses. Miss Jessop looked up at him as he paused in the doorway. 

“Ah, Bill. Did you sleep well?”

“Thank you, Miss, I did. I’m sorry if I slept too late. I didn’t know what time you required me.”

“That’s not a problem, Bill. We’d had quite an eventful day yesterday, and had not agreed a time. However, in future, could you be breakfasted and ready by seven." She paused. "If that’s not too early for you.”

Bill squared his shoulders. “Not at all, Miss. Farm, remember. Now where would you have me begin?”

_On my knees under your desk?_

The thought caught him by surprise. For a second or two he almost thought she had suggested it. He shook the idea away, feeling a flush already rising to his face. 

Miss Jessop was explaining the filing system.

The morning’s work was banal. Sorting and cross-checking slim cardboard folders against a draw of index cards. He had to walk backwards and forwards across the room in front of her desk repeatedly. It made him feel self conscious. He was still wearing the clothes he’d arrived in yesterday – canvas trousers, a loose cheesecloth shirt that was fraying badly at the cuffs, and a tatty waistcoat. When he’d dressed that morning, having slept naked, unable to think of a better option, he’d left off his little red neck scarf, thinking it would look silly in Miss Jessop’s grand abode. Nevertheless, even with that concession, he oughtn’t be working in her office dressed like this. 

He’d have to ask her about how she would have him dress. He liked that thought, He considered how this conversation might be an opportunity to tease her about looking at him, and felt a small shiver in his dick.

It was odd that he felt this way, he thought to himself, as he sat back down at his own small desk in the corner to start work on another file from the teetering stack she had given him, because Miss Jessop wasn’t pretty or anything. Her brown hair was tied back today, her face was pale and round. She had her usual heavy glasses on, and as far as her clothes went, all he had seen of her was a loose white blouse and what looked like a jacket hanging on the back of her chair. If he’d been asked to guess, he would have said that under the desk she was also wearing the same long brown skirt she’d been wearing yesterday before she changed for dinner. 

She was the most unspecial looking woman he’d ever seen, but every time he crossed the room, he stole another glimpse at her, thrilling if he caught a secret smiled, or a lip bite of concentration. She hadn't stolen any glances at him, that he'd seen, and he felt almost hurt. 

At midday a gong sounded. Miss Jessop glanced up from her paperwork, looking lost for a second, the said, “Ah, that’ll be the housekeeper with lunch. Are you hungry, Bill?”

“I am,” he said, standing. “May I escort you, again?”

Miss Jessop smiled. “You are quite terribly charming, Bill. Thank you.” And she walked around her desk (revealing the skirt he had predicted) and offered him her elbow again.

*

Lunch was fish. Skate, Miss Jessop had said. Bill had never tasted it before. He declared it satisfactory when she asked. 

He waited until she had almost cleared her plate before he said, “Miss, I am sorry that I don’t really have appropriate clothing for your office.”

“Oh,” Miss Jessop dropped her fork and it clattered onto her plate. “I’m sorry, Bill. Do excuse me.” She took a quick sip of water from her glass. “Sorry, sorry, I was miles away. Your clothing? I’m afraid to say I hadn’t really noticed.”

Bill got up from his seat and stepped away from the table to show himself to her. She looked him up and down.

“I see,” she said. “Yes. I suppose that’s not really office wear. Would you like me to send someone to fetch more of your things?”

“I don’t really.” Bill shook his head. “I don’t really have anything else. There’s another shirt. It’s no better than this one.”

“I see.” Miss Jessop looked thoughtful.

When she didn’t speak again for a few moments, Bill said, “What would you have me wear, Miss?” He hadn’t reseated himself. He was still standing beside the table, showing himself to her. 

She looked up at him, and he saw her throat twitch, “Oh Bill, I really think you could wear whatever you wanted and…” she trailed away. She sounded breathless.

_Breathless._

“If what I’m wearing right now is unsuitable, perhaps I should take it off.” He raised his hands to the top button of his shirt.

“Bill!” Miss Jessop shrieked.

He grinned at her.

“Oh Bill.” Miss Jessop’s hand flew to her chest. “You really had me then. You are quite terrible. Now sit yourself down, Mrs Carter, The Housekeeper will be here with dessert very shortly.

After they had eaten, Miss Jessop took Bill downstairs and introduced him formally to the housekeeper, who stared at him with a tightly pursed mouth, before nodding, “Alright, Mr Brown, it is,” and turned her attention immediately to Miss Jessop, “and he will require all meals.”

“Yes please, Mrs Carter.”

“And he will be sleeping on the first floor.”

“In the white room,” said Miss Jessop, pinkening very slightly. Was that because his room was so close to hers? Bill was certain that Mrs Carter was making no attempt to disguise what she thought he was. And what she thought he was, was Miss Jessop’s lover. 

“Bill has very important work to do here, Mrs Carter, please make yourself available to assist him in every way he asks.”

Mrs Carter’s little boot-button eyes stretched wide at this. “Indeed I will, Madam,” she said, with the expression of someone who had just been asked to serve a five course meal in a pigsty. 

*

As she led him back upstairs, Miss Jessop said, “I’m sorry, Bill. Mrs Carter has worked here a long time. She doesn’t like change. When I told her she’d have to live out she barely spoke to me for a month.”

Miss Jessop turned and led Bill through the back hallway towards the entrance foyer. 

“Yes,” he said, trotting to keep up with her. “Miss Jessop, why did you get rid of all the live in staff?”

“Oh that’s a terribly boring story,” she said, stopping at the front door. “Now, as you said, you don’t really have appropriate clothing for my office, how about we take a drive into town for some?”

“Really?” Bill couldn’t remember the last time anyone had bought him clothes. The clothes he was wearing had a mixed providence, mostly being his father’s, but some with origins unknown to him.

But the real delight, of course, was that Miss Jessop was to buy him clothes.

Miss Jessop was to choose what he wore.

*

The shop staff in the gentleman’s outfitters had an attitude to Bill and Miss Jessop, that was not dissimilar to that of Mrs Carter, although it faded away once they saw how much Miss Jessop was planning to spend. 

“My secretary, Mr Brown,” she told the thin faced man, who measured Bill as she spoke, “will be requiring 2 day suits, 5 shirts, a Sunday suit, an overcoat, an evening suit, a full set of underwear, socks,” – she paused and glanced at his worn work boots -, “shoes. Oh,” - and she smiled at him -, “and a pair of driving gloves. We’ll take those now, if you have his size.”

“Let me take a look at the gentleman’s hands,” said the thin faced man, moving to take one as Bill offered it. “I see. These are really quite large, but we may have something.” He turned, taking his sheet of measurements with him and vanished through a dark doorway.

Bill looked at Miss Jessop. “Driving gloves? You’re serious?”

“If they have them, you can drive me home.”

Have them, they did. 

*

Miss Jessop sat next to Bill as he took his place in the driver’s seat of her car. She explained the levers, brake and accelerator, “slow down or go faster,” the steering and the gears. 

“Okay, Miss, so…” and he pulled the car neatly out into the road.

Miss Jessop applauded and then as he straightened up and steered the car along the road she grabbed his thigh and squeezed it. Firmly and far higher up than was decent. And almost as she did it, she yelped and pulled her hand away.

“Bill,” she said, panting and flustered.

Bill concentrated on driving straight.

“Bill,” she said again. “Bill, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I apologise. I oughtn’t to touch you, and certainly not like that. I really am very sorry.”

Bill’s own heart was beating faster than he dare let on. “I don’t rightly know, Miss, why you would feel bashful about touching something that belongs to you.”

Miss Jessop let out a yelp of laughter. “You don’t belong to me, Bill. You work for me.”

“Unpaid, Miss. It is more like property when you think of it.”

“You are paid, but your wages go towards paying off your father’s debt. I don’t know why we have to keep discussing this. I can show you the figures.”

“I like to discuss it. Don’t you think it’s interesting. The ethics of it all. You did buy me and you do all this fancy talk to make it seem like you didn’t. But you did. And I can’t leave.”

“You can leave. But I would have to repossess the farm.”

“Exactly. I can’t leave. I belong to you.”

Miss Jessop sighed. “Oh if you do say so, Bill. I’m such a terrible villain and I am now cruelly making you drive my car-. Oh! Watch out!” Miss Jessop shouted out, as a fox darted out of the high hedgerow.

“Fuck. Miss-sorry-‘scuse-my-language.” Without time to think, Bill swerved, avoiding the fox but sending the car off the road through an open gate. The field beyond the gate sloped steeply downwards and the car gained momentum, rolling down the hill at speed. 

“The brakes,” cried Miss Jessop.

Bill’s mind went blank, all he could do was flounder at the car’s controls. Miss Jessop lurched over and grabbed the brake lever and yanked it, but to was too late, the car thundered into a pond, ducks and weed flying and finally came to a halt, half submerged. 

Bill’s heart was hammering. He looked over at Miss Jessop. Her chest was heaving. “Are you okay, Miss?”

“Yes, Bill, yes,” said Miss Jessop. “I’m unhurt. Are you?”

“I’m fine. Here let me help you.” And with a quick movement, he jumped down into the water and came splashing around to Miss Jessop’s side of the car. “Here, Miss. Come here,” he said, reaching for her.

“Bill, you can’t mean to carry me.”

“Of course I mean to carry you. What else should we do? Both get wet through? Come here.”

Very reluctantly, Miss Jessop slid herself as close to Bill as she could, and true to form, yelped as he lifted her up and carried her cautiously out of the pond. 

Standing on the bank, he paused, smiling down at her. “I’ll carry you all the way home if you want, Miss. You don’t weigh as much as our sow, and I can lift that over a gate.”

“I am more than capable of walking, Bill. Thank you. It’s only around six miles from here.” And she shifted in his grip, giving him no choice but to set her down on the road. Together they began the long trudge back to Miss Jessop’s house. 

Along the way, Bill tried again and again to apologise, but Miss Jessop wouldn’t hear of it. “Oh Bill, my dear boy, I was a terror on the highways at your age. Compared to me, you are quite the gentleman of the road.” And he couldn’t help wondering what that had been like and wishing he had seen it. Miss Jessop was so controlled. He would’ve loved to have known what she was like at 19.

*

In the end, they didn’t have to walk far. After only ten minutes a car containing one of Miss Jessop’s neighbours passed them and when Miss Jessop explained the situation they offered them a lift and promised to deliver a message to one of Miss Jessop’s farmhands to retrieve the car. 

They did, however, give Bill the look he was now very used to getting. They too assumed he was Miss Jessop’s lover. And when they posited great surprise that Miss Jessop should have sent her car off the road, Miss Jessop did not mention Bill had been driving.

It was late in the afternoon when they arrived at Miss Jessop’s house. “You must change into some dry clothes,” Miss Jessop said to Bill as they both paused in the foyer.

“Aye, Miss. Except I don’t rightly have any until that outfitters sends through what you ordered.”

“Oh yes. Oh dear. I’m not really sure what would be best. You can’t stay in those.” She pointed at his sodden trousers.

“No, Miss.”

“Mrs Carter will have left. I am sure there must be something somewhere you could borrow but I wouldn’t know… I suppose you could retire to your bedroom until…”

“I could just take them off, Miss. If it is just you and me here.”

“Bill! You could not.” 

“I don’t think I have any choice, Miss.” And he reached for the laces of her trousers. 

"Do you have any underwear, Bill?"

"No, Miss. Never owned any, but my shirt is long."

Miss Jessop turned away, her face clearly scarlet. With her back to him, she said, “Alright, but you must stay sitting at you desk, Bill.”

“Whatever you say, Miss,” he said, as he dropped his trousers onto the floorboards and followed her down the hall. 

Miss Jessop could not even look at him for almost all of the rest of the afternoon. Bill ended up getting quite absorbed in working through the files on his desk. 

And then with no warning, Miss Jessop walked over to his desk. He could hear her breathing. She stood behind him for a few seconds and then she reached over his shoulder, and touched his chest. He turned his head and she yelped and jumped backwards.

“Miss Jessop,” he said, “can I help you?”

“I… Sorry, no. It was nothing.” Miss Jessop, took another step back, turned and all but ran back to her desk. 

“You touched me. Again.” He stood up.

“Bill,” she said, “you can’t stand up.”

“Whatever you say, Miss.” And he sat down again, his breath hitching. 

“Bill,” Miss Jessop said from her own desk, her own breathing more even. “I have to confess something. When we were at the outfitters I watched you being measured. I found it very distracting. I find you very distracting, and after I touched you in the car, and when you carried me, I can’t stop thinking about…” She thumped her desk with a balled fist. “I’ve done nothing useful this afternoon. Bill, I must ask you to go to your room and remain there for the evening. I will bring you some supper.”

“Miss Jessop, we don’t have to. I will do whatever you tell me, of course, but it doesn’t have to be that. I will do anything you want me to. I could take my shirt off, also, if you would like. Let me do that for you.” And he raised his arms to that top button again.

“Bill! No!”

“Really, Miss. I will do anything you want. Just tell me.”

“Then go to your room, Bill. Go to your room and just stay there.”


	4. The Man and the Monster

Bill awoke the next morning hungry, but no more hungry than he had awoken a thousand times before. Miss Jessop hadn’t brought him any supper. The last time he’d seen her she’d been at her desk with her head buried in her arms, refusing to move until he’d left the room. 

He stared at the ceiling a while, wondering what to do next. He kept thinking about Miss Jessop’s odd episode yesterday. She had said she had watched him being measured in the outfitters. _Had that aroused her?_ He knew she liked his body. He’d seen it the first time she looked at him back at the farm. But the way she was acting made no sense.

His dick was hard against his belly. He slipped his hand around it and felt a jolt of pleasure through his body.

He though about those moments yesterday. Those moments when she had seem overwhelmed and flustered by his presence. He thought about when she hadn’t been able to stop herself touching him. And he though, as he jerked at his dick, of her touching him more. Then of him touching her. Then of him being told where to touch her. 

He thought about the fact she had bought him from his father and it turned him on.

He was moaning softly now, already close. He thought of being in her office, of wearing one of the suits she had chosen for him, cut close so she could see the lines of him. He loved the way she looked at him. The way looking at him made her lose herself. He thought of how he had pictured himself that first moment yesterday morning, crawling under her desk, burrowing under that long brown skirt, pushing her knees apart and pressing his tongue against her. Kissing her there. Finding out her secrets.

He came into his hand with a thick pulse and a cry. 

When he opened his eyes, he sensed something had changed in the room. He sat up, and saw a note had been pushed under his door. 

It was from Miss Jessop. He skimmed the first paragraph of apology for her conduct, which ended with a plea for him not to speak of the incident again. The letter then continued in Miss Jessop’s elegant handwriting.

_As today is Saturday, Mrs Carter will not be here, she will have left you cold meals in the kitchen. Please take today for yourself, use the library and the grounds as if they were your own._

_I will return for dinner. Your trousers are in the boot room._

_Sincerely_

_Miss Amelia Jessop._

Bill folded the letter and put it beside his bed.

_Amelia._

She hadn’t put that in her signature before.

*

Down in the basement, Bill found the boot room. His trousers were laundered and pressed.

_When had she done this?_

He put them on, then took off his shirt and waistcoat. Washed and soaped them, wrung them out and hung them to dry by the range in the kitchen.

Wearing only his trousers, Bill breakfasted on the bread, cheese and preserves he found in the kitchen and took a short walk around the grounds. He spent some time in the library and selected several books which he took up to his room, in case he ended up having to spend another evening in there alone. One of them was a book of fairy stories that his mother used to read him. Since she’d left he’d reread it hundreds of times. 

After that he was quite overwhelmed by the fact he had been left alone to explore such a grand house all alone. He spent a long time wandering from room to room. He ate an apple from a fruit bowl. He poked at the keys on a piano. 

And he ended up, as he knew he would, in Miss Jessop’s bedroom. 

He looked in her wardrobe. A long line of similar long skirts in brown and bottle green, high necked blouses, he opened a drawer full of rolled stockings and shut it again quickly. He touched a long cotton night dress, hanging slightly apart from the rest of the clothing. 

He turned away a stared at her bed. He didn’t dare lie upon it. Instead he knelt down on the floor and pressed his cheek to one of the thick rugs. His heart fluttered in his chest. _Oh god, to lie like this on the floor of her bedroom and look up at her. To sleep like this on her bedroom floor._

 _Amelia._

After some time lying there he went back to his own room, collected the book of fairy stories and took it back to Miss Jessop’s bedroom. He lay back down on the rug by her bed, and began to read. 

When he finished the book he was hungry. He’s missed his lunch and thought he ought to wander back down the kitchen to find something eat before dinner. Then he could wash himself and change into his laundered clothes for Miss Jessop’s return. Perhaps he could kiss her on the cheek when she returned. See how she reacted to that. Perhaps she’d blush. Or kiss him back. Or slap his face.

He paused on his way out of the room and glanced at Miss Jessop’s dressing table. He gave it a moment’s consideration, but couldn’t really resist. 

He sat down on the small chair and looked at himself in the mirror. _His face, his hair, the muscles across his chest - what was it that she saw when she looked at him?_ There wasn’t much on the table. There was jar of cream, a hair brush and a small reticule. 

Bill picked up the bag. He opened it. Inside was a photograph. He pulled it out and looked at it. It was of a handsome looking man. The man looked somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t place him, or think what to make of this picture and where he had found it. 

_Her father?_

He peered back into the bag. Another photograph. He removed that one too and stared at it. It was of Miss Jessop. She was wearing a wedding dress. And on her arm, the man from the first picture. 

_So, probably not her father._

_She’d been married?_

He looked back into the reticule. It appeared to be empty. But when he pushed his hand down inside it, he found a key.

He knew straight away what the key must be for. 

*

Holding the key so tightly it was making an impression on his skin, Bill climbed the small dark flight of stairs. 

When he reached the door at the top, he had to fumble in the dark for the keyhole. He found it when the pad of his fingertip grazed it and slipped in the key. It turned easily with a quiet click, and the door to the attic swung open.

Bill paused.

He knew she didn’t want him to go in this room. 

He pushed the feeling away. He stepped through the door. 

The room was dark, but not pitch black like the stairway. There was a single high window set into the sloping ceiling. It only let in a little light. It was very dusty. It was also barred. 

The rest of the room was similarly unkempt. Clearly, the housekeeper did not come up here. There was little furniture in the long low space. A dresser with a jug and bowl and a single utilitarian bed with a metal frame. The bed had a restraint, a leather cuff, at each corner. Bill stared. It was completely clear to him that this room was a cell, that this was prison.

It took him a moment, but when he got his thoughts back, he knew he ought to get out of this room, possibly out of this house. And right now.

Quick as thinking it, he was racing away, not even bothering to close the door, or retrieve the key from the lock. He thundered down the stairs two at a time.

And at the bottom, he crashed straight into Miss Jessop.

Bill was solid. Miss Jessop staggered back against the opposite wall from the impact. She righted herself, looking at him, mouth wide. “Bill, I…”

“Miss Jessop…” Bill stared at her for a moment, then tried again. “Miss Jessop, I need you to tell me…”

“No, Bill, wait. Please. Did you go up there? Did you go in the attic? Bill you shouldn’t have gone in the attic.” Miss Jessop was all but shaking.

“It’s too late for that, Miss. What the hell is that? What the hell went on up there?”

Miss Jessop shook her head. “Don’t, Bill. Don’t ask me…”

“Don’t ask you!” Bill’s voice was tight and vicious. He was at least a foot taller than her and much, much stronger, but he was terrified. He wanted to scare her. He didn’t know what else to do. 

“Don’t ask me about that room, Bill. Just don’t.” And Miss Jessop said as she turned and started to walk quickly away, down the hall. 

Bill lunged after her, grabbing one of her wrists. She whirled around in his grasp. Both of them froze. Both of them stared at Bill’s hand around Miss Jessop’s wrist as if neither of them could believe it.

“You have to tell me what’s going on here, Miss. You have got some kind of prison cell up there.”

Miss Jessop swallowed. “I know perfectly well what’s up there, Bill.”

“I’m not staying in a house with a place like that in it. It’s not right. And as we both know I can’t leave, you’d better explain what it’s for.”

“I can’t, Bill. Please let go of me.” Miss Jessop tried to pull her wrist away, but he was far too strong for her. 

Bill tightened his grip on her and she winced. “You have to. And while you’re at it you can explain why you have no live in servants anymore. And why you act like you’re so desperate to fuck me all the time and then pretend I’ve imagined it. And why you even brought me here, because we both know it wasn’t to help anyone. None of this makes any sense and you'd better start talking.”

"Oh, Bill." Miss Jessop looked lost, "you don't want to do this."

""I'll be the one who decides that, Miss."

And Miss Jessop’s mouth narrowed into a hard line. He saw her swallow. She was shivering like she was as full of adrenaline as he was. “There’s a reason for all those things. Are you absolutely sure you want to know?”

Bill nodded. “Oh, I do.”

Miss Jessop spoke quietly. “It’s because I’m a monster, Bill." She looked up at him. "I am a monster and you really shouldn’t be alone here with me. You’re not safe. I thought I had my problems under control. Or, I hoped I did. But I clearly don’t. I’m a monster and no one, but most especially not someone who looks like you do, should be alone with me.”

Bill couldn't take it in, and when he spoke, his voice didn't sound like his own. “What? What do you mean you’re a monster? How can you be? Miss Jessop, please, what did you do? Who did you shut up there? Who was that prison for? You have to tell me.”

“Who was that prison for?”

Bill nodded.

Miss Jessop's eyes were green. He'd never noticed before. A cloudy green like a neglected pond. He knew so little about her. How old was she, even? 40? 50? Right now as he looked into her eyes, she looked old, like she'd lived a thousand thousand lives before they met. “Oh, Bill," she said, "that prison was for me.”


	5. The Husband and the Wife

Bill didn’t know what to say to her. For one very long moment he stared at her, both of them were panting. 

Eventually he said, “I don’t understand. _You_ were shut up there? In your own house.”

“Yes,” said Miss Jessop. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”

“But why, Miss. Who would shut you up like that? Why?”

Miss Jessop’s green eyes looked glassy. Bill realised why just a second too late. “Oh shit, Miss, oh god, I’m sorry, I never meant to make you…” Bill said, as a fat tear spilled over and slid down her cheek.Then he added. “Excuse my language.”

“That’s okay, Bill. I’m sorry. I should never have done this.”

“Done what?” said Bill, letting go of Miss Jessop’s wrist.

“I should never have brought you here. I thought I could cope with it, but who was I fooling? The only reason I wanted you was because of my old demons. I told myself that bringing you here would be a way of proving to myself, and to the world, that I was finally in control. But I was a fool, Bill. It was my loss of control, making me do it. And now you need to leave. Go, go and pack your things.”

“No, Miss Jessop, wait, please. What is it that you’re not in control of? Who locked you up? You haven’t told me anything. And please, please don’t make me leave.”

“Bill, I have no choice…” She looked at him as her voice faded away. 

She looked so sad. So lost. 

And Bill did the only thing he could think of. 

In that tight little corridor, he jerked his head forward. And he kissed her.

As his lips met hers, her whole body tensed. She moaned like a broken thing, parted her lips and pushed her tongue into his mouth. 

Bill groaned, and she surged forward, her hands in his hair. She was smaller than him and weaker than him, and yet somehow she overwhelmed him. She forced him against the wall at his back. All his teasing about her owning him seemed to come back to haunt him then, as she forced her way deeper into his mouth. Pressing herself against his bare chest.

And in response, he was shuddering; his hips jerking back and forth against his will. 

She twisted at his hair, pulling his head back, exposing his throat. She drew her mouth from his and bit her way down his jawline, licked broad stripes across his neck. Her other hand was on the waistband of his trousers, fumbling for the laces. 

All he could feel was her mouth, all he could hear was her breath.

And then, with no warning, just before she got his trousers loose, Miss Jessop yelped and lurched away from him. 

She slumped back against the opposite corridor wall, shaking and panting. Her hair was disheveled, her face pink. And Bill was erect in his trousers. There was no disguising it with them half-unfastened. 

After a moment Miss Jessop swallowed. “See,” she said, “you see the problem?”

“I don’t,” Bill panted, “I don’t see any problem.”

Miss Jessop shuddered. “Pack your things, Bill.”

Bill shook his head. “Please, first of all, Miss, I have nothing to pack. But second of all, Miss Jessop, please. It’s dinner time. Don’t kick me out now. Let me eat and sleep. If I am to walk home, which I presume I am, at least let me do that when I have a chance of making it before I’m lost in the dark.”

Miss Jessop went even pinker. “Are you suggesting we have dinner together? After what I just did to you?”

“I rather think I did it to you. And in any case, are _you_ suggesting I can’t defend myself against you, Miss?”

“You don’t know what I am, Bill.”

“Oh really,” Bill lolled back against the wall, legs apart, his dick still half-hard. “You’re nothing I can’t handle Miss. I grew up on a farm, remember.”

Miss Jessop’s mouth was a thin hard line, had been since the kiss, but, at this, she quirked a smile. “Fine,” she said, “fine. Let’s have dinner.”

*

They had game pie and pease pudding. All cold, but extremely good. Miss Jessop didn’t change her clothes, just disappeared into her room for a few minutes to wash her face. When she came out Bill was stood on the landing waiting for her. She nodded to him, but refused to take his arm until he’d put his shirt on.

Over dinner, he tried not to think about kissing her. Or about how she had kissed him back.

They’d eaten in silence for ten minutes when Miss Jessop said, “If you had the key to the attic I assume you also saw my wedding photograph.”

“Yes,” said Bill. “I’m sorry.”

“If you mean you are sorry for my marriage, then I can tell you that you are certainly not as sorry as I am.”

“Where is your husband now?”

“He wasn’t ever really my husband, as it turned out,” said Miss Jessop, a little amusement in her voice. “He was married to someone else. He’d abandoned her with three kids to raise. And, of course that was the smallest of my problems, at that time.”

“Because he locked you up? He locked you in the attic.” Bill set down his fork. He didn’t feel like eating anymore.

“He had to do that. He was not a good man, my supposed husband. He lied and cheated. He was a bigamist. He took advantage of my condition to try and take over Jessops while I was unwell. But he shut me up there because he had to.” Miss Jessop took a long drink from her wine glass. It was the first time she had served wine with dinner. Bill hadn’t drunk much of his own glass, but the bottle near Miss Jessop was already only a quarter full.

“I’m sorry Miss but I don’t see how it would ever be necessary to shut you in a prison.”

“I was very ill, Bill.”

“So, people get ill, you don’t have to tie them down.”

Miss Jessop looked down at her plate for the first time Bill noticed she had barely eaten anything. She sighed. “I was hysterical, Bill. I was a danger to myself and others. I was a maniac. The way I was with you, upstairs, earlier, but I couldn’t control it at all. Back then, I wouldn’t have been able to stop at… I did things to myself, and to others it if could. I was a nymphomaniac, Bill. I still am. It’s best if I stay away from people.” Miss Jessop finished what she was saying in a rush, took hold of her glass and swallowed the rest of her wine.

“I still don’t understand, Miss. So you kissed me. So you touched me." He shrugged. "You bought me. I grew up on a farm. This kind of thing, it’s not a problem if you’re careful where you seed gets split, Miss. I know.”

Miss Jessop reached for the bottle and refilled her glass. “You and I Bill, we’re from different worlds. Perhaps on the farm it is okay for a woman to rut with any attractive man she can persuade into her bed, or to bring herself to a crisis every night, but not for someone like me. There are, or there were, rules. I was married. My husband and I were the largest land owners in the area. Certain things were expected of me. I shamed him.”

“He did well enough out of marrying you though, didn’t he?”

“Did he?”

“Jessops, that was your inheritance, wasn’t it. Your father left it to you. And he got control of it by marrying you and then, surprise, as soon as he has his boots under your table, you are so delinquent that you need to be locked away in the attic.”

“Bill, that’s not true. I was very ill. He had to lock me up.”

Bill ignored her. “What went wrong with his plan? How come he didn’t keep you up there forever”

Miss Jessop looked at him, looked like she was about to protest again, then said, “His wife found him.”

Bill laughed. “And did she drag him home?”

“Actually, he murdered her. Got away with it for a year before the police tracked him down. That was when I got out. They found me and nearly locked me up in an asylum, but in the end, he spoke up for me, the man who, as it turned out, wasn’t ever my husband. Then they hung him, of course. And, although it was long ago, most people around here know the story of what I was. The reputation I had as a young woman has not receded so very much. I know everyone who has encountered you so far has made certain assumptions.” She had managed to drain another glass while she said this. She picked up the bottle, it was empty.

Bill jumped to his feet. “Let me help you, Miss.”

“No, Bill really you’re eating.”

“It’s what I’m here for, Miss.” And before she could say another word, he sprang over to the dresser and took a fresh bottle of wine. He uncorked it and brought it back to the table, noticing how she was looking at him. Her eyes were dark. As he poured the wine into her glass, he made sure to stand as close to her as he could. Letting her watch him with those big blown pupils. 

After he’d set the bottle on the table, he leaned down a little so he could whisper in her ear. “Thing is, Miss if everyone already thinks it of you, why work so hard to try and be respectable?”

Miss Jessop took a drink. “Don’t, Bill. Don’t do this.”

“I can’t help it, Miss,” he said, his breath ragged, a soft ache starting in his groin. “Please, Miss, if you are to throw me out in the morning, at least for tonight, take me to your bed. Please, Miss. Don't make me beg. Unless that's what you want. I'll do whatever you want.” 

Miss Jessop looked at him. She bit her lip.


	6. The Bigamist and the Local Woman

Miss Jessop looked at him for a long time. And then she nodded. She nodded like she didn’t have a choice.

*

In the bedroom, Bill pushed Miss Jessop up against the wall. He kissed her and her response was a shocking and ferocious lust, as she moaned and pushed back, her hands in his hair. He growled. He was already hard.

He had to fight her to regain his mouth so he could speak. “Please, Miss, can I take my clothes off for you? I really want to. I like it when you look at me.”

Miss Jessop sighed. “I have seen it all already you know,” she said, her breath coming in fits and gasps.

“Not all of it,” he said, and he pressed himself to her so should could feel how hard he was. “Feel what you do to me.”

“Bill,” Miss Jessop said as she moved to kiss him again.

But Bill pulled his mouth away, “Tell me to do it, Miss. Tell me what to do,” he said, his voice a rasp of a thing. 

"Okay." Miss Jessop put her mouth close to his ear. He heard her breathe a second. “Take. Your. Fucking . Clothes off.”

Bill moaned. He thought his legs might give way from under him after that, but he took a step away from her and started to unbutton his shirt. Miss Jessop was panting against the wall, eyes wide, a dark red blush on her cheekbones and her clavicle. 

He finished unbuttoning his shirt and let it fall off his shoulders, kicking it aside when it hit the floor. 

“Bill,” whispered Miss Jessop, “oh, god. You’re so beautiful.”

“Thank you, Miss.” He lowered his head as he undid the laces of his trousers. “It all belongs to you, you know, Miss. You bought me.” He looked up at her. “You own me.”

“I didn’t realise the reason you kept mentioning that was because you liked it,” she said with a little half smile.

“I don’t rightly know why I like it so much, Miss. But I can’t stop thinking about it. It makes my dick hard.” He let his trousers drop to the floor and stepped out of them, kicked them aside. “See. Do you like it, Miss?”

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was referring to, but he thrilled inside when she said, “Yes.”

He pulled his shoulders back and stood for her for a moment, just watched her looking at him. Saw the lust in her eyes. He knew how good he looked. He knew his shoulders were broad and muscled, that his stomach was flat and firm and that his thighs were big and long. He knew his face was strong in the jaw and soft in the eyes. And he knew his dick was big and hard and pressed firm and tight against his belly. He knew he pleased her, and that turned him on. 

“Come here, Bill,” she said, breathless. 

And he considered not telling her his secret. She didn’t need to know. And he was sure he could cover it up well enough. But something in him made him tell. He wanted to. “Miss,” he said as he moved up close to her again, “I should tell you, I’ve never actually done this before.”

“Really?” said Miss Jessop, pulling back from where she was about to kiss him. “But, the farm.”

Bill looked down and felt himself colour a little. “I know what to do, Miss. I’ve just mainly watched, is all.”

“Dear god.”

“I’m sorry, Miss. I promise I can still make it good for you. I’ll do anything you ask me to.” 

But then he saw her face. Saw that her exclamation hadn’t been disappointment. It had been lust.

“Oh, Bill,” she said, following with a hard swallow. “Don’t apologise for giving this to me. My only problem is that I’m now going to have to work out what I ought to pay you father for his son’s virginity.” Bill saw Miss Jessop’s face in the moonlight. She was smiling, but it was feral. She looked like a beast that was about to eat him. His dick pulsed harder. He was so turned on he thought he would go crazy. 

“In that case I’d better, uh, I’d better make it worth it for you, Miss.”

“Oh, you’d better,” Miss Jessop said and leaned closer, covering his mouth with hers.

With a bit of jostling and stumbling they got to bed with their lips locked together. Bill pushed Miss Jessop down onto it and unfastened the top button of her blouse. It was the first of dozens.

“Oh, fuck that, Bill,” Miss Jessop said and she took hold of one side of her blouse with each hand and tore it open. 

Bill growled with arousal. He grabbed Miss Jessop’s chemise and did the same. Miss Jessop’s tits spilled out from the shredded cotton. “Oh Miss,” he breathed, “please.”

“Make it worth it for me,” Miss Jessop said softly. “Imagine I’m paying your father a great deal for this.”

Bill dipped his head and kissed her tits. He licked at her nipples and it made her squirm and moan. He kissed down to her belly and by the time he reached the top of her skirt she’d unfastened it and he could brush it away to the floor with her petticoats. He tore away her knickers and gasped, “oh god, Miss,” at the sight of her cunt. 

And then he did the only thing he could think of to do. He dropped to his knees on the floor and pressed his lips to it. When Miss Jessop sighed and fell back onto the mattress, he licked her. It tasted like nothing he’d ever imagined. He couldn’t believe how wonderful it was. He slipped his tongue into her. 

It wasn’t to difficult to work out what pleasured her. The sounds she made told him everything. He licked her softly over and over, finding a spot that made her cry for him more. She tangled her hands in is hair and showed him where he wanted her.

And after a few moments she gasped more loudly, and then spasmed and shouted and called his name which turned into a long keening yell. She pulled his face away from her, hands still locked in his hair and then drew him up her body, onto the bed, guiding his mouth back to hers, and with her other hand, she slipped his solid erection into her. 

“Oh,” Bill said. The heat and sensation a sudden incredible shock. 

“That’s it,” Miss Jessop said, gently. “Try and take it slowly if you can.”

Bill fought the urge to thrust into her as hard and fast as he could, he could feel his climax was only a whisper away. He rocked his hips gently and even that was taking him to the edge. He could feel it there, but he wanted something more. “Miss,” he whispered, “I need…”

“What, Bill. Say it. Ask for it.”

The thought of asking her to do it was exciting and horrifying. He made himself look her right in the eye. “Please, Miss.” He groaned. “Please, tell me you own me.”

Miss Jessop’s smile then, made him shudder with delight. “That I own you? But of course I own you, Bill. Your father sold you to me to settle a debt. You’re my property. I bought you for my bed. And now you’re my slave.”

And that was all it took. White behind his eyes. And he used all the strength he had to hold himself up, over her, his whole body jolting and rocking with pleasure. 

"Amelia."

*

After a few moments, Miss Jessop had climbed into the bed and Bill had followed, entwining himself around her. 

“Have you, uh...?” Bill paused. “Miss, can I ask something?”

“Yes.”

“Was that your first time since…? Since what happened?”

Miss Jessop bit her lip. “Since my husband locked me in the attic?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Sorry, if I was,” she paused. “If I was intense.”

Bill laughed. “So, how long did you wait for me?”

And then she laughed. “It’s been ten years. Ten years since I got out.”

Bill nibbled at her ear. “Why did you wait?”

“I was scared of what might happen.”

“And it was all okay, wasn’t it? You didn’t turn into a monster or anything.”

“Not really. Were you disappointed about that?” 

He slapped her for that. Just the back of his hand, soft on her upper arm. She caught his wrist and brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “Do you want to talk about it? That attic, I mean. What happened.”

“I’ve told you about it,” said Miss Jessop, dropping his hand.

“Yeah, Miss, you’ve really opened up about the time your bigamous husband locked you in an attic for years so he could steal your business.” 

“I was ill. It was a better option that the asylum. If he’d sent me there. And he could have done after how I’d behaved, I’d still be there. And I’d still be in the attic here if things hadn’t. Well…” Miss Jessop drew herself up, readjusted the pillows so she was sitting upright, “I was lucky that his wife came looking for him, lucky, even that he killed her, lucky that he didn’t run after that. And lucky that he ended up speaking up for me after his arrest.”

“Why didn’t he run?”

“At first I thought he’d assumed he’d get away with it, and he didn’t want to leave his situation here. He had control of the whole estate with me locked up. But I pieced some things together after I got out. He’d left a lot of paperwork behind. I found some letters that suggested he was having an affair with a local woman. He wanted to run but she wouldn’t go with him. She had a child that she didn’t want to leave. Eventually he did persuade her to go, but it was too late. The police were onto him by then. I was lucky again.”

Bill’s breath was short and fast. “Miss Jessop, this woman? What happened to her?”

“No idea. She wasn’t with him when they found him, I know that.”

“And, how long ago was this?”

“The arrest. Eleven years ago.”

“I’d have been eight years old," Bill said. His voice sounded small and distant.

Miss Jessop frowned. “Bill?”

“Miss, I…” Bill was already climbing out of bed. He found his trousers and started to pull them on.

“Bill, what is it? You don’t have to…”

“What happened to the woman?” Bill said again, his voice was hard.

“I really don’t know. Why are you so concerned?”

Bill pulled his shirt over his head. “Because, Miss, she was my mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've stuck with this so far, this chapter is your reward.


	7. The Runaway and the Rescuer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates. Back on track now.

“Bill, stop. This is madness. You can’t know.”

“Can’t know?” Bill was raging. His heart was banging in his chest and he could hardly follow his racing thoughts. “It’s too neat, Miss. The dates all fit.” He fastened his trousers clumsily. “And my mother, everyone knows she ran away with another man. No one says it, but everyone knows. The only mystery was why she never tried to come back for me.”

“Oh, Bill.”

“Don’t, Miss. Don’t say a word.” He held up a finger. “If the man she ran off with was your murderer husband, he probably killed her, didn’t he?”

“Bill, you have to calm down.” Miss Jessop slipped her feet out from under the bedclothes and onto the floor. 

“Don’t,” Bill was yelling. “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down, Miss. ‘Scuse my language, Miss. I can’t stay here.”

Miss Jessop froze. “I don’t see why not. Please, Bill, it’s the middle of the night. Would you prefer your own room. Take the candle from the dresser.”

“He was here because of you. The man who stole my mother away. Stole my mother and most likely killed her. Because of you. How can I stay with you after that? In your house? In your bed?” He all but shuddered. 

“Bill! You can’t blame me for that. After all the things you have forgiven me for.”

“I was wrong to forgive you anything. I was confused. You made me lust after you. I should never have let you seduce me, even after you had told me you were a harlot. It’s my own fault. I should have known when I saw that prison. I should have known when you touched me. I should have known when you tried to throw my father out of his fucking home.” Bill was crying. He wiped his face messily with the back of his hand. “I’m a fool, Miss. You have made a terrible fool out of me.”

And he ran from the room.

*

Bill stumbled through the darkened house. On the ground floor, confused and upset, he lost his way and ended up in the conservatory. There was a door that opened onto the terrace at the back of the house. He shoved it open and ran out into the night. 

It was cold. He crossed the lawn, allowing himself one glance over his shoulder. He saw the candle light at Miss Jessop’s window. But she was not staring out of it searching for him. He had so hoped she might be. 

He’d been so wrong about her. She was a terrible, evil woman. Part of a plot that had somehow ensnared his mother. What would she do now he had left? Take the farm? Perhaps he had enough information to blackmail her? There were tears clouding his eyes again. He was nearing the edges of the woods. 

He started to run faster, the wind whipping at his shirt. He entered the woods at a sprint. And then he fell. He fell and fell and everything was dark. 

*

“Bill? Bill, can you hear me?”

Bill opened his eyes. His head hurt. He blinked a few times and Miss Jessop’s face came into focus, looking down at him. “Where am I? Miss Jessop? What happened?”

“You fell into the old well, Bill. You must have been there all night. Luckily you'd made quite an obvious track across the lawn. The gardener investigated it and found you. Took us half the day to get you out of there. I wasn't sure if you'd make it. I thought…” she stopped and swallowed. “Ah, never mind what I thought.” Miss Jessop dabbed at Bill’s forehead with a damp cloth. 

“Miss, where am I?” Beyond Miss Jessop’s shoulder, Bill could see a high vaulted ceiling. The air was dusty. The only light from a high window. He went cold.

“We’re in the attic, Bill. My old attic room. You remember? Can you remember what happened?”

“I ran away,” said Bill quietly. And he tried to move his right arm, realising quickly that it was restrained. “I remember. Miss, what have you done to me?”

Miss Jessop looked at his arm as he flexed it in the buckled cuff. “Bill, I am so very sorry about this. I didn't have a choice. You can’t leave. Not now. I never meant for this to happen.”

“You can’t do this, Miss.” Bill stared at her. "Miss. Please."

“We had a deal. I bought you, Bill.”

“You never said I couldn’t leave. You always insisted, in fact, that I could.”

“Yes, but that if you did I would be forced to repossess the farm. You must see my predicament here, Bill. Now you know what you know, you’d never let me do that. And you could ruin me. This is for the best.”

And Miss Jessop reached out and pushed the sheets down a few inches, then touched Bill’s chest, with a tiny shudder. Bill held her gaze. He tested the restraints on both wrists, but they held firm. 

“Please, Miss, where are my clothes?”

“They’d got terribly dirty in your fall, Bill. And you were always the one so keen to shed them.” She was moving her hand gently on his chest, staring at his body, her lips were parted, her breathing heavy.

“Miss, what are you doing?”

“Bill, I’m sorry. I did try to warn you. I'm a monster.” And she dived forward and kissed him. And he didn’t know what to do. And while he was still trying to decide how he felt about the situation, his mouth opened under hers. And he moaned.


	8. The Monster and the Man.

Miss Jessop took her mouth from Bill's and lifted her head away. “Goodness me, Bill, I am so sorry. Whatever have I done?” Her face was flushed, her lips red from the kiss. She looked beautiful and terrifying. Her eyes glittered.

“It’s okay, Miss. It’s okay.” Bill bit his bottom lip. “You’re okay. You’re here, with me. Everything is going to be fine.”

“No, Bill, it isn’t fine. Not at all. You see, I have lost myself. I have lost myself and I must have you Bill. I am so terribly sorry. I would rather it was with your accord.”

Bill swallowed. “My accord? Now? And if I don’t give it? What then?” Bill tried to keep his breath even. He could not have answered, in that moment, the question of whether he wished to make love to Miss Jessop or not, all he knew for certain was, he had very little left to negotiate with. 

Miss Jessop pursed her lips for a second. “I’d rather, I’d rather if you didn’t test me on that front, Bill.”

“Then I’m sorry, Miss. Because I will not give it. Not here. Not like this. Take me to your bed, Miss and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ve already promised you that. If you want me tied down, tie me in that room, but not here. Not in your prison.”

Miss Jessop climbed up fully onto the bed. She threw a leg over him, straddling his hips, still covered by the thin press of the sheet. “Bill, I can’t. I can’t trust you now. Not after you left me last night. Not after you blamed me for a such a thing as I had no part in. You will have to be kept here. Anything else is too risky.” She was panting. He could scent her arousal, thick and sweet in the dusty air.

“You can’t mean to keep me here like this, Miss.”

“Why ever not?”

Bill looked wildly around the room. Surely such a thing wasn’t possible. “What shall I do for a privy, Miss?”

“I have receptacles. I have a bell. You forget, Bill, I have some experience of keeping a person in this manner.”

“So,” said Bill, his jaw hard, “you mean to do to me as your nefarious husband did to you?”

“In certain aspects, yes. In others, it will be quite the opposite of the torment I suffered.” And she pressed herself against him. The heat of her heavy on his stirring dick.

“So, in addition, you mean to rape me, Miss?”

“I hardly think we would call it that, Bill. You have said so many times yourself that I own you, that your body is my property. You even,” she pushed her face close to his, “seemed to enjoy such notions.”

“Miss. Don’t.”

“You remember that first morning. How you told me you thought I had bought you for my bed?” 

“This is not your bed, Miss,” Bill said, and was surprised how desperate he sounded. He gave the restraints another tug. Nothing moved. 

“Is it not? I own it?” Miss Jessop lifted her hips and pulled away that sheet that covered Bill’s groin. 

“Please, Miss. Please, don’t do this to me.”

“Be quiet, Bill. Your body is not protesting.” And she took hold of his dick, hard now, in her hand. Bill closed his eyes. Miss Jessop shifted her skirt and sunk herself down onto him. It slipped into place easily, she wore no underwear, and was as wet there as she had been the night before, when he had already covered her cunt with his mouth. 

Her hands were on his shoulders. She slid the right one down to his chest as she moved herself up and down on him. “Bill,” she said softly, “you are so beautiful.”

Bill didn’t respond, he squeezed his eyes tighter shut. 

Miss Jessop moved herself a little more. Her left hand slid to his hair. She twisted at it. “Look at me, Bill,” she said, pulling his hair tight enough to make him gasp and snap his eyes open. She ducked close to his face again. “Tell me,” she said, dropping a kiss onto his mouth, “tell me you don’t want this.”

“I don’t want this, Miss.” And he stared at her, hard. 

Miss Jessop stilled. She looked at Bill as if seeing him for the first time. She sat up sharply, then climbed off him and stood, brushing down her skirts, leaving him shivering in the sudden chill air around his damp dick. “Oh god, Bill,” she said, her voice twisting around gasps. “Oh god, what have I done? Whatever have I done?”

“Miss, please. Just let me go.”

“It’s too late, Bill. Too late. I should never have listened to your idea that I fornicate with you. And now look at me. I can’t control it, Bill, I can’t control it. I look at you and I have to have you. I am a monster. You have awoken the monster in me.”

Bill looked at her, this little, scared woman, who, at this moment, could not be less monstrous. “Of course you can control it, Miss. Everyone can. These feelings are strong, but you know what you’re doing. You just think you can’t control it because that man taught you that you couldn’t. You are not the monster, Miss. The monster is the one who made you. The same monster that stole my mother, stole something from you. Sometimes, Miss. When I look at you, it’s like you’re only part of a person. Or like the real you is hidden, buried inside. You don’t have to be that terrified proper lady, or this thing you call a monster, you can be you. I can help you, Miss. Please let me.”

“I can’t, Bill,” said Miss Jessop. “I just can’t.” And she turned and ran from the room. 

Bill listened to her footsteps on the stairs, he looked up at the dusty ceiling. He wished she had pulled his sheet back up over him.


	9. The Lady and the Whore

She’s couldn’t have been gone more than an hour. Bill wasn’t sure, when he heard her footsteps on the stairs, if he was relieved or trepidatious. He tried to twist his body to hide himself, but his movements were too restricted. His bladder was full. 

Miss Jessop walked into the room and avoided his eye. She made straight for the bed and unfastened the restraint on his left wrist. Then she circled the bed, did the same for his right wrist and sprung back, staring at him fearfully. “Bill,” she said, her voice quavering, “I understand you must be quite enraged with my behaviour…”

Bill had sat up and pulled the sheet over his naked body. “I'm fine, Miss, thank you,” he said, massaging his wrists. 

“Bill, I am here to ask you to leave. It is clearly not safe for you to remain here. I think that finally, we may both be in agreement on this point.”

“I thought we’d both agreed that _wasn’t_ possible. Admittedly at different times but, the farm, you see.”

Miss Jessop nodded. “I have dealt with this issue. Here.” Under Miss Jessop’s arm was a slim folder, like the ones that were everywhere in her office. She stepped forward and dropped it on Bill’s lap, starting back again, quickly.

“What’s this?” he said, picking it up. He thought he could guess, except for the fact, that it simply couldn’t be that.

“Deeds. Deeds to your father’s farm. I’ve put it into your name. You can decide what you tell him about that. It’s yours.”

“Miss Jessop, I can’t take this.”

“You earned it, Bill. More than earned it. I know I can’t make it up to you, what I’ve done, but, it’s all I can give you. I hope we can end this matter here.”

“And I am to leave?”

“I thought you wanted to leave. After last night. And I am sure today has hardly convinced you otherwise. I will have your clothes sent to you, the ones we bought in town, when they arrive. They will hardly be of use to me.”

“I don’t know that I do want that. Want to leave, I mean.”

“I’m not giving you a choice, Bill. You offered your services in lieu of rent, and considering the way things have turned out, that deal is now over. I’m going downstairs now. I shall wait in the conservatory until you leave.” Her voice was thick with tears. She turned her face away.

“I will be needing my clothing, Miss. My regular clothing.”

“It’s in your room, Bill. Goodbye, Bill.” And Miss Jessop walked past him and down the stairs without looking back. 

*

Bill arrived home as the sun was setting. In the kitchen his father sat, eating bread and stew and drinking beer. The place was dirty but not dilapidated. On his walk home he had been startled to calculate that he had only been gone four days. 

“Back then, are you?” said his father, barely looking up.

“Yes,” said Bill.

“Had you, did she?”

“Yes,” said Bill and he dropped the folder of papers onto the table. 

“What’s this,” said Bill’s father, finally looking at him properly. 

“Deeds to the farm.”

Bill’s father set down his spoon and carefully looked Bill up and down, as if he was something dirty and spoiled. “There something I don’t know, son?”

“A great deal, father, as it happens.”

“Don’t you cheek me now you’re back under my roof, son.”

Bill bit back a comment about it being his roof. It would only lead to more questions and looks of disgust. Instead, he went straight to bed, and cried until he slept.

*  
Bill went back to his duties on the farm. The farmhands all asked questions about his time at the manor. They called him ‘Little Prince’, a name he had earned as a young teen, because he was so fair of face and too young to have heavy duties. But now they also called him ‘whore’ as often. And although they had always bullied him a little, now they seemed more cruel and more angry. 

At night he still cried. Sometimes his dick was hard, but he didn’t want to touch it. He knew it would make him feel worse.

One day, three nights after his return, he was hiding in the barn with a bottle of his father’s whisky, when he heard a commotion in the yard. He tried to ignore the sounds of the farmhands laughing and shouting, but then he heard one of them shout, ‘It’s a fucking dinner suit. Why has the old bitch sent him a fucking dinner suit? He gonna wear that for the pigsty.” And he jumped up, and he ran. 

Half a dozen of them were crowded around a large trunk in the middle of the flagstoned yard. Strewn around it were shoes and shirts and jackets. “That’s mine,” he shouted as he reached them. “Leave it be, it’s mine.”

“Yours is it, whore?” said the largest farmhand turning around. “And what’s it all for? This fancy gear? Your mistress want you to still look pretty does she?”

“I didn’t know she wanted you to have clothes on,” shouted another, pulling out a nightshirt and yanking it over his head. It tore down the back.

“No,” Bill yelled, making for the nightshirted tormentor, but before he reached him two of the other farmhands grabbed hold of by the arms. Bill was strong, but he was no match for both of them. “It’s mine,” he shouted, even as they laughed and twisted his arms back. “It’s mine, from Amelia.”

“Sorry, sorry,” said the largest farmhand in mocking tones. “From who?”

“From, from Miss Jessop.”

“That’s not what you said.” The large farmhand moved closer, placing himself square in front of Bill’s helpless figure. “You said ‘Amelia’. Is that what she had you call her? When you were servicing her?” And he reached out and grabbed Bill’s dick and twisted it hard enough to make Bill cry out.

“Well?” the farmhand said, “Is it?”

“No,” Bill whimpered, as his dick was finally released. 

“Light a fire,” said the large farmhand to another of the gang. “Let’s burn this whore shit.”

“No,” Bill yelled, “no, please.”

“Why not?” said the large farmhand. “You want your whore-clothes, do you? Want to keep them safe in case her ladyship requires your services again?”

“Please,” Bill whimpered, struggling, “oh, please, please don’t.”

But another of the farm hands was already heaping the clothes into a pile. Yet another fetched a container of gasoline and doused the pile as Bill whimpered. 

The large farmhand took a matchbox from his pocket. “Admit you’re that lady’s whore and maybe I’ll let you keep something.”

“Fuck you,” said Bill, which earned him a hard punch on the jaw. 

When he recovered himself the large farmhand had thrown a lit match onto the pile. Tears pricked at Bill’s eyes.

“That’s a shame, because I was going to let you keep this.” The large farmhand removed a sheet of paper from his jacket. “Seems she sent you a letter. Shall I read it? ‘Oh Bill,’ he said in a comically high-pitched voice, ‘how my old cunt does ache for you, now you are gone.’”

“Fuck you, I know you can’t read,” Bill spat.

“So you do want me to burn it?”

“No, please, please don’t. Let me have it.”

“Then say you’re her whore.”

“Please. Oh god. I am. I was. I was her whore, okay. I was her fucking whore. I'm not anymore.”

“Oh yeah, cuz she threw you out. What happened? Couldn’t get hard enough for the old bitch?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said brokenly.

“Christ, Bill, you’re such filth,” said the large farmhand, and as he spoke the two that were holding him dropped him to the ground, just feet from the blaze. The large farmhand dropped the letter in front of Bill’s face, giving him a last kick as he and his gang of bullies, ran away laughing.

Bill picked up the letter. It was stained with dirty water from the yard. But he could still read her words. 

_Dear Bill_

_I’m sorry again. But I am sure you will look so very beautiful in these._

_Best wishes_

_Miss Amelia Jessop._

Bill felt the heat from the fire and his tears on his face.


	10. The Cook and the Salesman

A month passed. 

Bill had managed to salvage from the fire, nothing but a belt buckle, which he kept under his pillow with Miss Jessop’s letter.

In the mornings he would take it out, put it between his teeth and bite down on it. If his dick was hard he would touch himself. It didn’t make him sad to do that now. Insofar as it didn’t make him any sadder than he was anyways. And when he stroked himself he thought of her, of course. He tried to think of the time in her bedroom, his first time, but as he got more aroused he found his mind always went to the attic. He fisted his hand around his dick and arched off his mattress with his mind full of those restraints on his wrists, the way she looked at his naked body and the way he’d said no and she hadn’t stopped. Those thoughts excited him most, though he tried to push them away sometimes. He didn’t know why that was the memory of her that was most potent.

*

Every Tuesday there was a market in the town. Bill hadn’t been since he’d returned from the manor, but on this particular Tuesday morning his father crashed into his room at sun up and shouted, “Come on, you lazy arse, I want you to take the yearling and sell it for me.”

Bill rolled over, bleary, tangled in the sheets. “Do we need to sell her?”

“You know, son, we don’t, as it happens. Now we don’t need to pay rent to Jessops. However, I’ve checked those papers and it seems I ought to be paying rent to you.” 

"What?" Bill sat up, the sheets fell down his body and pooled in his lap. 

His father looked his bare torso up and down, with an appraising look. “What did she have you do, son?”

“It doesn’t matter, father.”

Bill's father cocked his head. “She hurt you? She make you do unnatural things? The farm in return for your silence about her depravity? She has a reputation, you know. That husband she had that went to the gallows. You know about that?”

“She told me all about it,” said Bill coldly. 

“Aye, son. You’re a good lad to keep a lady’s secrets. But you’re no favoured prinny here. Now get your fucking breeches on and get your arse to market.”

* 

Bill enjoyed the anonymity of the market. No one here knew about his time at the manor. No one here gave him sour looks or called him a whore. 

He sold the yearling quickly and decided to take his time getting home. He wandered around the market stalls and bought a bag of liquorice root to chew on. He winked at a pretty girl, who blushed and bit her lip. For the first time, he felt his heart lift a little. He felt like is life could go on. That he might have a reputation now, an odd stain on his character, but even so, life could still be tolerable. Perhaps he would even persuade his father to sell the farm and move elsewhere. 

And he wondered, idly, while he chewed why Miss Jessop hadn’t done that, when she had found herself in a similar position. Why had she allowed herself to endure all that shame and stigma. 

And then he knew why. It was because she thought she deserved it. Because she thought all that was said of her was true. And how could he ever convince her it wasn't?

He was thinking about her again then. Before he had done so, that had been the longest time he’d gone without her invading his thoughts. But now she was back, and she was lodged in his mind. The gentleman’s outfitters she had taken him to wasn’t far from here. He could go back there.

_Go back there and do what?_

Perhaps alcohol would help. He crossed the square and headed for the Rose and Crown.

*

The pub was busy with market traders. Bill took his beer to a corner table and sipped thoughtfully. He looked around and the all the ordinary people living ordinary lives. He wondered if he would ever be like them again. 

And then he saw her. He stopped with the mug halfway to his lips, his heart banging in his chest.

 _Mrs Carter._

As he stared at her, she looked up. She had clearly recognised him too. She held his gaze. He nodded in greeting and she nodded back. He decided that was enough to invite himself to her table.

“Hello, Mr Brown,” she said as he sat down. Her tone wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t hostile. Distantly polite, perhaps. 

And before he was even settled in his seat, he said, “How is she?” He hadn’t planned to say that, but the words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. Just saying it made him feel like a weight was being lifted off him, like something was breaking in his chest. His throat was suddenly thick with tears. 

“Miss Jessop? I believe she is well.”

“Please, Mrs Carter. Is she okay, really? Is she hurt? Did I hurt her?”

Mrs Carter looked at him with her tight little eyes. “I don’t rightly know what you are asking me, Mr Brown. 

Bill set his jaw. “Yes. Yes, you do.”

Mrs Carter leant close across the little, sticky table. “Do I now? Well then, if you insist." She paused and took a drink. "Did you hurt her? Yes, yes you did. Mr Brown, you are a poison to that woman. The last thing she needs, with her condition, is the likes of you. Filth like you, confusing and seducing her.”

“Oh no, no.” Bill shook his head. “You can't think that? Does she think that? Please, I didn't mean to. Please, Mrs Carter. I must see her. Can I send her a note?”

Mrs Carter’s eyes went even tighter and smaller. “Don’t you dare come near her. It took me a week to get her to eat again. She's very unwell. She cannot be around the likes of you.”

Bill bit his lip. "That's not true, Mrs Carter. There's nothing wrong with her."

Mrs Carter drained her mug and stood with a tight smile. “Do excuse me, Mr Brown. And stay away from Miss Jessop. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're a farm boy.”

*

When Bill arrived home, his father was sitting at the table. On the table was a small box. 

“What’s that?” Bill croaked. He taken advantage of the solitude on his walk home to cry. His throat was still sore. 

“I should have given you this years ago, son,” said Bill’s father. “These are your mother’s things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed, this fic now has an end in sight. Two more chapters, then I will stop tormenting them. (Probably.)


	11. The Demon and the Dreamer

“What is all this?” said Bill, peering into the box. It was full of slim books bound in thin brown leather. Cracked and flaking. Cheap things. 

“Your mother kept diaries. A nonsense, but she did insist. I don’t know who she thought would ever want to read about a farmer’s wife and her dull life. Hours she spent on these things.”

“Have you read them?” said Bill, lifting out one volume. His heart pinged in his chest. _His mother._

“No I haven’t. It’s bad enough she spent all that time writing the damn things, without me spending as long reading them.”

Bill flipped open the book in his hand, lines and lines of his mother’s elegant cursive hand. He knew very well his father wouldn’t have stood and chance of deciphering this. “Can I keep them?” Bill said.

“They’re yours. She always said I was to give them to you. Reckoned now you’re a man I’d better do it.”

*

Bill took the diaries to his room. Although he desperately wanted to read the last entries, the ones that he hoped concerned Miss Jessop’s husband, he forced himself to begin at the beginning. To read what his mother had written as a young girl. 

Every evening after supper, he sobbed with her over doomed love affairs. He discovered, through those pages, three men that his mother had loved before she’d ever met his father. He smiled at her delight over her wedding day and cried with joy when he found out how much she’d adored him.

It took him a week of reading to find the place where his mother met a strange man. He was rich and dashing. Older than her and with a charm that ensnared her. And, yes, after a few elicit trysts and shared kisses, the man revealed that he lived at the Manor and his name was Frank White-Jessop.

Bill could hardly bear to read on. His hope, his great hope was that Frank had revealed what he had done to Miss Jessop - that he had deliberately constructed her mental illness - and that his mother would have written it down.

It was getting dark, the evening when he found what he was looking for, but he knew he couldn’t wait. He double checked what he’d read, slipped out of bed, dressed, packed up the books and crept downstairs. 

In the kitchen he found a lantern. It was bitter outside. The walk to the manor was ten miles. He should be able to do it in two hours. Maybe a little more.

*

In the end, he took several wrong turnings and by the time he arrived at the manor he wasn’t sure how long the journey had taken. It was very dark and as he crunched up the driveway there wasn’t a single light on in the house. 

He didn’t knock. He thought it unlikely she would answer her door in any case. But he knew that the conservatory door would not be locked. So, lantern in hand, he made his way around the house and slipped inside. 

It made his heart hammer in his chest to be here. The rooms, each so familiar. The drawing room piano, the roses in the hall. He crept up the staircase, keeping his footfalls as soft as he could. 

He hadn’t thought how he would do this. He couldn’t go to her room. She would be sleeping. She would be terrified.

So he chose, instead, to return to his own old room. He gently squeezed that latch, trying to open the door silently. 

But when he stepped over the threshold and raised the lantern, he saw there was someone sleeping in his bed. His first thought was horror. That she had replaced him. That she had replaced him, so quickly.

But then the figure in the bed stirred and sat up. That white cotton night dress. That sweet, soft face. Her eyelids flickered. 

_She was sleeping in his bed._

He thought his heart would stop.

“Miss Jessop?”

“Bill,” she said, smiling, “there you are. Come to bed.”

“Miss Jessop?” Bill stayed in the doorway. He was confused. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. 

“Why are you still standing there?” 

Bill watched her a moment longer. Was she dreaming? Did she think him a figment of her imagination? And did she, and he wasn’t quite sure how to feel if this was the case, had she been imagining him before tonight? To her, was this just one of many visits by his ghost?

“Bill,” Miss Jessop whispered, letting a familiar hard tone creep into her voice. “I know what you want. Strip yourself. Show yourself to me. Show me what belongs to me.”

And his breath caught. His hands went to his collar, without hesitation. And he realised he didn’t care what she thought he was when she used that tone.

Off came his coat, waistcoat, neck tie, shirt. And then his trousers and boots. He stepped out of the pile of clothing. “It’s all yours, Miss,” he said. "Your property." His voice was thick and heavy.

“Oh Bill, I will never tire of seeing your body. You are astonishing. Come, come and kiss me.”

Bill walked across the room. As soon as he was near enough, Miss Jessop grabbed hold of him and pulled him onto her, plastering his mouth onto hers and grasping the back of his head, with her fingers tight in his hair. She moaned. He could hardly breathe. His cock was harder than it had been for weeks. 

With their lips still locked together, Bill climbed on top of her, shifting his legs so her straddled her. His hips were pumping up and down. He was shivering and rocking with pleasure just from the scent and the heat of her. “God, Miss,” he whispered into her mouth. “Miss, please. Let me see you. Let me put my mouth on you.”

Miss Jessop freed his lips. He burned where she had bitten at him. “Get my night dress off me, Bill. Rip it off me.”

Blindly he grabbed the neckline and tore it away. 

Underneath it her body was covered in bruises and scrapes. 

“Miss Jessop?”

“What is it, Bill? Will you fuck me now. You must fuck me. Should I order you to do it? Bed slave, that you are.”

“No, no, wait, Miss Jessop. Wait. What is this? What happened to you?”

Miss Jessop pulled herself up a little and looked down at the slash of her body that was visible where her night dress had given under Bill’s hands. Great blue black bruises covered her chest and abdomen. “Oh,” she said, “it is silly. I fell down the stairs.”

Bill reached out and touched a bruise that covered her sternum and part of her left breast. “Fuck, Miss. How did you hurt yourself this badly?”

“The truth is rather that, you see Bill you might as well know, I did it on purpose.” She smiled like it was a naughty secret. “I failed of course, my intention was to hurt myself more than this. But Mrs Carter managed to revive me.”

“You threw yourself down the stairs. To kill yourself? But why? Because of me?”

“Because of a lot of things, I suppose. But after Mrs Carter told me she had seen you in town. How happy you were. How you had been laughing with your friend about how I gave you the deed to the farm…”

“What? Miss. No. That’s not what happened at all. I all but cried in front of her, Miss. I don’t know how to be without you. I don’t know how to live. Please Miss. Miss, I love you.”

Miss Jessop laughed. “Oh Bill. Or whatever creature you are that wears his face. It is too late for that torment.”

“What? Why is it too late?” Bill’s eyes scanned the room. On the table by her bed where he had set the lantern was a bottle. 

The label said _Morphia._

Miss Jessop’s eyes were glassy. “I don’t know why I was so clumsy and brutish to use the stairs. Not when we have such sweet poisons now.”

“Dear god Miss. No, no.”

And he tore her from the bed, flipping her over his lap and jamming his fingers hard into her throat.


	12. The Vet and the Vet's Wife

Miss Jessop struggled in his arms, and he felt tears prickle his eyes at how feeble she felt. He wriggled his fingers in her mouth and finally she wretched. Some foam and bile jolted out of her mouth covering his hand and splattering in the floor. 

“Come on, Miss, please. More than that.”

He tried to find that spot again. She made a moaning noise and her arm came up to try and get his fingers out of her mouth. But she couldn’t fight him. He rammed his fingers deeper and she gagged hard and vomited. More this time. All over him and her and the floor. But was it enough?

He twisted her around and set her on the bed, sitting her up.

“Bill,” she said, reaching out for him. “Come lie with me. It is such a comfort to have you here with me for my final night.” Bill was in tears now. He took one of her hands and pressed it to his cheek as she muttered on. “I want you so much, Bill. Since the moment I first saw you. You make me burn. Your body, your face. The things you say. The things that make you hard. For al that I know you were sent by the devil to test me, at least he had the good graces to send you here to escort me down to hell.”

“You’re not going to hell, Miss.” He looked at the vomit on the floor. 

“Bill, if anyone should know my sins it’s you.”

“But it’s not true, Miss. You’ve done no sinning. He made you think it, is all. Frank.”

Miss Jessop looked suddenly a little more lucid. “Frank?”

“Frank, your husband. He made you think it. He paid actors to seduce you, he put tinctures in your drinks.”

Miss Jessop looked puzzled. “How do you know this?”

Bill stood up and picked up his trousers from the floor, drawing his mother’s last diary from the pocket. “My mother. He told her about it. She wrote it down. She felt terribly guilty, Miss. I’m sorry she didn’t do more to save you, though.”

“I’m not. No one should save me. I’m a monster,” she said quietly.

“You’re not, Miss. You’re not.”

Miss Jessop climbed off the bed and staggered over to where Bill was standing in front of the fireplace, holding the diary. Her hair was a wild tangle, her nightdress gapped open revealing her bruised body. She looked exactly the demon she believed herself to be. “Bill,” she said, with her face close to his, “I tied you up, and I raped you."

Bill swallowed. His dick pulsed.

"However he made a monster of me. It’s done, now. I need not know the detail of his methods.”

And she snatched the book from Bill's hand and threw it into the dying fire.

“Miss!” Bill lunged and grabbed the book from the flames, but as his fingers closed around it, Miss Jessop started to topple. And he found himself dropping it again so he could twist around and catch her in his arms before she hit the floor. 

“Miss, miss.” He tapped at her face. There was foam on her lips. He glanced at the fireplace. His mother’s diary was ablaze. It barely seemed important as Miss Jessop’s half naked body jerked and spasmed in his arms. 

He took a breath. He needed a plan. 

Carefully he lifted Miss Jessop and placed her on the bed. Her body had stilled and she was still breathing faintly. 

Then he pulled on all of his clothes and wrapped Miss Jessop in the counterpane. He lifted her and carried her over his shoulder downstairs, out of the house and to the garage. 

He got her propped up on the seat of the Oldsmobile. The cold air seemed to help her. She was muttering a little now, not quite conscious, but it lightened his heart to see it. He spent a moment looking at the car’s controls and trying to steady his breathing. He hadn’t brought the lantern.

“Miss Jessop,” he said, “can you tell me, does the car have lights? Can I turn on the lights?”

“Oh yes. Electric ones. Very expensive.” And her head slumped onto his shoulder. 

“How do I switch them on?”

“Hmm?”

“ _How do I switch them on?_ ” Bill yelled at her, panic fraying his temper.

Miss Jessop gave a soft laugh, leant forward and flicked a switch in front of him. The lights sprang on. “Are we going for a trip?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, starting the car and pulling out of the garage. “Miss Jessop, you must have a doctor, a physician? A woman like you. Who do you call for medicine?” He turned the car in the direction of the town.

When Miss Jessop didn’t respond he prompted her again, “Miss? A doctor?”

Her head was heavy on his shoulder again. He took his left hand from the wheel and tapped at her face. “Miss, please. Come on, Miss. Stay with me.”

“Bill,” she said softly. “Take your clothes off, Bill. Take your clothes off and kneel on the floor. I want to see you beg.”

“Miss Jessop, I need to take you to a doctor. Can you tell me where I can find your doctor?”

“No doctors. They’d never let me be with you. Cut up my brain first, Frank says.”

“Okay, fine. I know where we can go.”

*

Outside a small house, in a row of houses on the edge of town, Bill was yelling, “Harry! Harry! Harry, please get up.”

A sash window above them opened and a woman’s head shot out. “What the fucking hell is going on?” she bellowed.

“Margaret, is Harry there? It’s an emergency.”

“Get to fuck,” shouted the woman.

“I’ll pay him,” Bill struggled to think what might be an appropriate price. “I’ll pay him fifty pounds.”

“Fifty pounds? What sort of creature you got sick?”

“Please,” shouted Bill, “not in the street.”

The window slammed shut. Bill went back to the car and lifted Miss Jessop over his shoulder again, taking care to tuck the counterpane carefully around her, and turned to find the vet’s wife opening the door. 

*

Margaret, the vet’s wife, was a stout, practical woman, whose expression was blank as Bill brought Miss Jessop inside and set her on the table. 

“Where’s Harry?” said Bill.

“Called out,” said Margaret as she approached Miss Jessop and lifted one eyelid. “You know what this one’s eaten?” she said, sounding exactly as she would if her were talking about a prize bull. 

“It’s called Morphia,” said Bill.

Margaret tutted. “That type. All the same.” She looked into Miss Jessop’s eyes and checked her pulse. “Up at that manor,” she muttered. “Everyone knows what used to go on. Morphia, just the start. Her husband was the key to it. Course that rogue went to the gallows, best place for him. But they were all at it. Both of them were as loose as you like. Men, women… My brother got involved with it, both of them took him to bed. He was a very bonny man, my brother. Had to leave town not long after. He didn’t like the way people looked at him. “Margaret looked over at Bill, looked him up and down. “You be careful, young man.” She put her head on Miss Jessop’s chest, then looked up. “You made her puke?”

Bill nodded. 

“You probably saved her life. She’s dozy but her breathing is normal. At least it would be normal if she were a pig. Which is good enough. The cold air on the journey probably kept her heart going.” She sniffed. 

“She’s going to be okay?” and his voice odd, choked up and distant. 

Margaret pointed to a chair, set at the table by Miss Jessop’s head. “Sit there,” she said. “Talk to her. She gets through the night, she’ll be fine. Get yourself something for her to throw up in, unless you want to be mopping my floor in the morning.” And she stomped off towards the door.

“Where are you going?” said Bill.

“Bed,” said Margaret.

When the door slammed behind her, Bill looked down at Miss Jessop. Her eyes were open, but glazed. “Miss?” he said. “You okay, Miss?”

“It would seem so,” she whispered. “I appear to be very bad at extinguishing my own life.”

“Were you listening to what Margaret said? I don’t think she knows much about anything but veterinary business, so don’t listen to any of the other things she said.”

Miss Jessop gave Bill a thin smile. “It’s okay, Bill. I know what people think.”

Bill took her hand and squeezed it.

“I’m sorry about your mother’s book,” she said.

“Yeah, Miss. So am I.”

“I starting to wonder what it would take to make you turn your back on me, Bill. I doubt I will ever be able to make that up to you.”

Bill looked down. “Don’t kill yourself, don’t send me away.” He looked up at her. “Forgive yourself.”

*

It was late morning when they returned to the manor. Margaret had given Miss Jessop a smock dress to wear and Miss Jessop had promised to have fifty pounds plus considerable extra compensation sent over later that day. 

As they halted outside and Miss Jessop steadied the controls of the car, it felt like that very first day over again.

“What would you like to do, Bill?” said Miss Jessop as they walked together to the front door, his arm around her waist.

“Do you have work?”

“Always. But I think I should be cautious with exertion today. Perhaps I ought to go to bed.” She opened the door.

“Whatever you want, Miss,” said Bill with a tiny hitch to his breathing, as he followed her inside. 

In the hallway, Miss Jessop broke like a damn. She forced his back up against the door as soon as it was closed. Kissing him forcefully until the ache at his groin made him moan. 

“Get it off now,” she muttered, “all of it.” 

Bill’s next breath came out as a groan and he started on his shirt, ripping it in his needy haste.

“I’m going to sack Mrs Carter,” Miss Jessop said, kissing and biting at his skin as he exposed it. “You can run the house.” She was frotting against him. “You can do it naked. To think once I wanted to buy you clothes. I’m going to burn all the clothes you own. You’re never getting dressed again.”

Bill thought of the farmhands, just for a second, they seemed so very far away. “Miss,” he was laughing a little even though she was biting at his neck and making him writhe as he yanked off his trousers and kicked them away. “You’ll never get your work done with me like this all the time.” He was already naked against the door. His dick was so hard against his belly he could barely sense anything else.

“I thought,” she said between biting him really quite hard now, “you were supposed to do anything I wanted.”

“In your bedroom, I will” he panted. “In your bedroom I’ll do anything you ask. But if I am to run your house, I will do that well for you. Dressed correctly. But I will strip myself for you every night. I’ll still be your property. You bought me and I’ll always belong to you. I’ll be your perfect servant during the day, and at night, your slave.” He jerked against her as he said that. “Take me to your bed, Miss. Take me to your bed and tell me what to do. Show me you still own me.” And he dropped to a whisper. Knew he had to tell her what he really needed. “Fuck, Miss, I don’t want help you get better or convince you there’s nothing wrong. Mrs Carter said I brought it out of you, with how I am, well if that’s the truth, then I am glad of it. Because I like it, Miss. I like what you are. And you can do what you want to me. Turn your monster on me, please.”

Miss Jessop wetted her lips. She did as he asked her.

 

FIN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was fun. Thanks to everyone who read this, commented and kudos'd. I didn't expect much in such a fandom backwater (not sure this is even fanfic, really). So nice to have you along for the ride.


End file.
